This is wrong on so many levels, it approaches actual beauty. It’s like poetry.
Thank you, Multimedia Fusion. Thank you, Clickteam. You have made the life of a hard-working game designer a little brighter. Merci beaucoup.
Writer, filmmaker, game designer
Archive for the 'Misc' Category
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed a post about my tooth breaking in two. That happened on Friday night, when I was supposed to be editing the two short films we made for the Philips Cinema Parallel Lines competition. Instead, eating a Snickers ice cream caused one of my teeth to split in two, and we had to get to a dentist. The only open dentist at that time of night was at the other end of Frankfurt, but it was an emergency, so we had to take a taxi, which cost us more than we would normally spend on food in several days. Still, we’re lucky; we got away with paying something like 60€ for taxis and dentist; if we lived in the United States, things might have been quite different.
The Dentist of Doom, as Verena called him, turned out to be a lunatic. What is it with strange racist dentists? This is my second one now. (My normal dentist is very nice, and not racist at all.) This one honed in on my last name and couldn’t shut up about Greece. But everything he said was bizarre, and conversations went exactly like this (with my mouth wide open and him poking at my gums):
Jonas: Is there no way of repairing the tooth?
Dentist: Alexander the Great destroyed Persepolis, did you know that?
Jonas: Well, he conquered it, and…
Dentist: He killed everyone there. Not even the dogs were allowed to live. A Greek person told me that.
Jonas: Uh, yes, well…
Dentist: But he wasn’t Greek, right? Alexander the Great. He was Persian.
Jonas: Actually he was Greek. Northern Greek. Macedonian.
Dentist: Is that so? Well, I don’t speak any Greek. Sorry. Maybe I’ll learn some today. Hah hah. I had a Greek assistant once. She was very nice.
Jonas: Aha.
And it kept getting weirder and more non sequitur. He was not happy when I pointed out that German is actually also a native language of mine, and I’m only part Greek. He also went on about the fact that he likes to pull out teeth. Which is what he did with mine. Whether or not it was really necessary, I will probably never know. He sure had fun.
It could all have been much more painful. I suppose you could say I was lucky that the tooth was almost dead anyway – if its deadness had not involved an eight-month root canal (or endodontic therapy, as the Wikipedia calls it) that on occasion caused me pains that words have yet to be invented for. Now I have a missing tooth at the back of my mouth and a strange glob of congealed blood, and I kind of wish they’d pulled the tooth out back when it first started hurting like a motherfucker.
Oh well. At least the impolite elitists have struck again in Harold Bloom and the Death of Art, aka The Comments Thread That Will Not Die. Someday I’ll have to write a real follow-up to that one.
I seem to be getting into a writing phase. I’m working on my screenplay, on several blog posts, on my novel… and making progress, too, which is excellent. Today was a bit slow, because we were tired from celebrating our friend Sebastian’s birthday on the Feldberg last night, but all in all the work is going pretty well. And people are still enjoying Phenomenon 32, which means all that work wasn’t entirely for nothing.
Oh, one other thing. I’m looking for a better webcomics host than Webcomics Nation – any ideas? Most of what I’ve seen wasn’t particularly interesting, but I’d appreciate any input.
Verena took these incredible photos of a baby fox we saw at Fasanerie Wiesbaden (a kind of wildlife park) the other day.
We just stood there for several minutes, staring and making incoherent sounds. It was cuteness personified. It was beauty itself. It was babyfox.
Its mother was nearby, taking a nap:
You can see the rest of the photos Verena took on that day here.
Yes, you’re right. I overreacted.
I behaved in a way that can only be described as silly, and fed the trolls some prime trollfood. Granted, the attacks were more personal than usual this time, but being hated by idiots comes with being any kind of artist. Especially a silly one like me. What can I say? Sometimes, especially when I’m tired and/or enthusiastic, I forget to turn on my inner cynic.
But why am I complaining? Many of the people whose opinions I respect are enthusiastic about Phenomenon 32. The right people are having fun. Sure, the haters make everything more difficult, but since when is that new? My games are wildly successful compared to some of the reactions William Blake got to his work, and his work is infinitely better than anything I’ve ever done.
Yep. Totally overreacted. Blame it on the state of mind of someone who’s spent entirely too much time sitting in front of Construct trying to make everything work.
There are other things to worry about, other stories to be told.
One good thing did come out of all this, though: all this thinking and worrying about trolls helped me come up with a wonderful opening line for my next game. Speaking of which: yes, it’s going to happen. Donations are still extremely welcome and helpful. And I have decided upon a timeframe of sorts: I’ll take a break from game design for a few months to work on other projects (like getting my book published), and with fresh energy and enthusiasm I will make the game in September-October. Maybe I’ll even make it in Construct, if it’s a bit more stable by then.
Anyway. Things are good. I got a new monitor for my birthday, and lots of books. There are stories to read, and stories to tell, and a cat to feed. What else can a person want?
And while we’re at it, my new secret weapon:
And now for a change of subject.
I’ve written an article about the situation in Greece for Enemies of Reason. It’s called, with breathtaking originality, The Greek Situation. It doesn’t cover everything, because that would be impossible, but I hope it will make some people think differently about what they’re being told by the media, and will cause them to investigate the matter on their own. Please read it.
You can also get more information about Greece from my short documentary about the 2008 Greek riots, called The Greek Riots: Some Basic Facts.
Enemies of Reason is one of the few blogs I read every day, so I’m very happy about this.
